I'm wondering why the donation drive was stopped early, before the enough money was collected to cover the Foundation's Q3 budget of $198,000. After our discussion in August about the German chapter, I thought it was fairly clear that those funds could not be used for the general operating expenses of the Florida Foundation.
So the fundraising drive raised $220,849 - $36,866 = $183,983 towards the operating costs of the Foundation. This leaves a shortfall of $198,000 - $184,983 = $14,017.
The Verein has nominated a few things that they would like to spend money on, such as hardware within Germany, and that's all very well, I'm sure it will help with our general mission. But those costs are not part of the Florida Q3 budget, they are part of the Verein budget. So the shortfall still remains.
This is really just an accounting error. What needs to be done now is the Florida budget needs to be revised downwards, by cutting out items that might instead be purchased by the Verein. Then the Verein needs to produce their own budget. Only then will we have a consisent story to tell to our generous donors.
-- Tim Starling